The news that Chase Manhattan plans to lease 1 million square feet in Sam Lefrak’s new office building across the Hudson has given the city’s real estate lobby its Evil Empire: Jersey City.

Ridiculous, of course. Yet, New Yorkers who joke about the Turnpike and “The Sopranos” turn to jelly every time a Jersey developer manages to pick off some microscopic fragment of Manhattan’s commercial core.

Last week, the Times ran a “let’s panic” story about the Chase move (first reported in The Post), which will affect at most 2,500 support-staff workers – not 4,000 as the Times stated. It darkly hinted that Jersey City, with the help of tax incentives and the supposed inattention of City Hall, was poised to suck Manhattan dry.

Now, Manhattan has more than 300 million square feet of first-class office space, and most of it’s taken. The 1 million square feet Chase will leave behind at 55 Water St. will be spoken for long before anyone actually moves out two years from now.

Every week, commercial brokerage firms like Insignia ESG churn out surveys that can put you out like a light with their references to “net positive absorption.” Dry as the data sound, they tell a compelling tale: Demand for space in Manhattan is insatiable.

Companies continue to gobble up every available crumb. Though it hasn’t been announced, Morgan Stanley is taking around 120,000 square feet at 1633 Broadway – in addition to two buildings it already occupies, with a third on the way!

The Jersey move calls for perspective even in the context of Chase’s own operations. After the move, Chase will still have more than 6 million square feet in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The bank owns 270 Park Ave. (the headquarters), One Chase Manhattan Plaza, and Four New York Plaza. It effectively owns Metrotech in Brooklyn.

In addition, it leases 430,000 square feet at 1211 Sixth Ave., and will soon move into an additional 500,000 at 1166 Sixth Ave. Chase will still have at least 19,000 employees in the city after the Jersey relocation.

Back in the lean years of 1981 and 1990, it was ceaselessly repeated that the city could no longer retain office tenants or compete with out-of-state tax incentives.

In those years, everyone believed that empty office space spelled disaster for the city economy. Now, thanks to Chase, we’re hearing the opposite: that a scarcity of space portends the same bleak outcome.

But a booming economy is only a “crisis” if you want to promote one of two agendas dear to the heart of the real estate industry: derail zoning reform, or promote large-scale development in the outer boroughs.

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If you still need reassurance that the city is not at the brink of ruin, take a stroll around TriBeCa, bursting with innovative residential conversions.

Take a look, especially, at the 17-story structure at North Moore and Varick streets – a former windowless 1924 dairy refrigeration warehouse being converted to condos.

The Atalanta, says Robert Tiburzi of Houlihan Parnes, a partner in the project, will market its units as “raw space, and it’s up to the buyer to design it. Most of our buyers have their own architects.”

The building, across from the former home of John F. Kennedy Jr., will draw “a combination of Wall Street and entertainment industry people,” Tiburzi says.

The design by architects Richard Cook & Associates won the approval of the Landmarks Preservation Commission: the windows will look old, but are actually new, punched into the old, featureless facade.

Douglas Elliman broker Helene Luchnick says the project, to be completed by the end of the year, will contain only 43 units, many of which will likely be combined to create larger apartments – including 6,900-square-foot whole floors.

Prices start at $1.2 million, up to $7.5 million for a penthouse – a projected sell-out of $82 million.

Down the block is the Fisher Mills Building, a consolidation of three 19th Century mercantile structures once taken for dead.

They’re being marketed by Elizabeth Stribling Associates, which has done a number of Downtown conversions.

James Lansill, head of Stribling’s new TriBeCa office, said Fisher Mills is already 80 percent sold out. He estimated that developers GDM, headed by Glen McDermott, had invested about $35 million, including purchase costs, in the once “creepy” structures that “most people would have torn down.”

GDM is also building a brand-new nine-story brick and cast-iron condo around the corner on Hudson Street. Prices of its “loft-like” apartments will run from $965,000 for a 1,980-square foot two-bedroom to $5 million for a penthouse with wraparound terraces.